


When the Levee Breaks

by peacensafety



Series: Valhalla [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 'cause people wanted to know, some Sterek referred to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 19:23:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacensafety/pseuds/peacensafety
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or How Thor Got His Groove Back</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Levee Breaks

Thor had spent centuries… literally centuries being called, in one form or another, “That Guy.” Sure, they had called him loads of other names, but the recent appellation of “That Guy” was as appropriate as any, and Thor kind of liked it. It was better than “Guy who sleeps on the couch,” or “Guy that’s stoned all the freakin’ time, like really man,” or even “Guy that I could like if only he had just a little tiny bit of a hint of a goal.” 

“That Guy” was a good name, Thor told himself. Hel tended to call him ‘bitch’ a lot, and his old fighting friends wouldn’t call him much of anything because the look of sadness in their eyes before they even opened their mouths made him walk away to find something else more interesting to look at. Hel was the only one who would seek him out, and she never felt sorry for him so he liked her. 

There was nothing to feel sorry about anyway, Thor convinced himself. Sure, he used to be one of the most badass warriors in the Nordic pantheon, but that type of pressure was really just kind of over-rated. When everyone knows you’re a badass, they suddenly want to fight you all the time just so that they could say, “Hey, that one time Thor kicked my ass, like seriously, ‘cause I’m totally still alive, but I can remember the pain like it was yesterday.” Thor kind of wished that he was remembered for something that went a little deeper than that. He had done a lot of things that were seriously more memorable than that one time he kicked that one guy’s ass. He really had, but he supposed that after he had fought long enough maybe that’s all anyone remembered him for.

Thor was more than that. He was an awesome scrapbooker, he could grow tulips like nobody’s business, he played a mean set of bongos, he could literally drink anyone on the planet under the table, and he had even tried his hand at politics a time or two. There were like, so many whales that just needed saving.

When Thor gave his anger away, he discovered a whole new side to himself. He liked butterflies and designer shoes and surfboards. He liked how kittens felt (although mean old Hel gave him a three cat limit that was applicable at all times without exception, even if there was a homeless kitten that just needed to stay over one single night) and he wished he had a sugar glider to live inside the pocket of his shirt. He really liked fuzzy blankets and hot chocolate. He liked to try all kinds of fruit and really, there were so many kinds and he hadn’t even discovered them all yet. And most of all, he liked to go to the scrapbooking store and just stare at the different papers that were neatly displayed in rows and rows of shelves.

Hel was a good friend to him, too, although she would deny it because she was just a little bit grumpy when other people were around. Thor didn’t mind, because she would snuggle with him on the couch sometimes and watch Asian dramas with him. They had even set up a drinking game, so that any time someone discovered a long lost relative, or a girl had to dress up like a boy, or someone got into a fight caused by a misunderstanding, or that someone’s mother tried to interfere in a relationship, or that someone got a piggy back ride, or that someone on the television got drunk, they had to take a drink. It was fun, but Hel would kill him if he told anyone about that part of their relationship. She mostly stood up for him, especially in his father’s court, and fought off anyone who tried to claim that he wasn’t the man he used to be.

So when Hel asked him to come to a little place in Beacon Hills, California, Thor went with her. He had only mentioned to her once or twice (or maybe thirty-six times, who was counting?) that he felt something sad coming from that area, so he didn’t need a whole lot of convincing to move out of the beach house that they were sharing. Then Hel announced that she was going to become principal of the local high school and that Thor needed to teach Spanish, which was something that he could do.

The students in Spanish class were adorable. Thor could have been wrong, but it was possible they were the most adorable students on the face of the planet. He briefly wondered why he hadn’t taught school before. Not only that, but they only looked at him weird for the first couple of days. Then they started screaming his name down the hall whenever they saw him, like they were terribly happy to just be able to see him and that he had come again to teach them another day. Thor liked this feeling, the feeling of children being genuinely happy with virtually no effort on his part whatsoever other than the simple fact that he was there. It was a good feeling, and it was one he didn’t want to give up.

Thor was good at teaching, too. Once he had implemented the rule that they all had to speak in Spanish for half of the class about anything that they wanted to talk about, the kids got more comfortable in the language and they spent only a very few minutes looking up new words. They talked about everything, and Thor knew that once in a while they would stop, shocked that they were speaking another language without realizing it at all, and then stare at him in wonder. He liked the look on kids’ faces once they realized that they had accidentally learned something. They might not know the parts of speech, but they could get dropped into the middle of some Spanish-speaking country and take care of themselves without a translator.

So when Hel had asked him to take a detention duty, Thor didn’t mind at all. He wanted to see what those kids would do when there wasn’t any sort of curriculum planned. Not only that, but he really liked the kids in detention. They were some of his more clever students with their friends, and they still had the anger and the rage that he had lost so long ago. Lots of anger and rage, if truth be told. Thor wondered why they were so angry.

They asked him a few questions about his past. He didn’t expect that, at all. He didn’t really want to explain, and he didn’t really like how after every single thing that he said they all gave each other significant looks that he couldn’t interpret. 

More importantly, he didn’t understand the feeling he got around one of them, little Przemysław, called by all his friend by some weird nickname. Przemysław made him feel like his old self, and the child smelled like the arctic winters of his homeland and the warmth of honey and amber. The child made him long for something that he hadn’t felt like he was missing for centuries, but he didn’t know what that was.

They came for detention again the next day, and before Thor could figure out why they were serving so much detention they demanded that Hel come in and speak with them. They said it was important.

And it was.

Thor wasn’t sure what to expect when he showed up at a burnt out old mansion in the middle of the woods on Tuesday night. He wasn’t sure at all that this was what he wanted. He had liked his existence, had liked being “That Guy” for the past fifty years, had liked kittens and scrapbooking and fuzzy blankets. He knew that he couldn’t do it for any longer though, because if what these kids were saying was true, the old ones were rising, and he knew that Dracula wasn’t going to be the last of them. 

He wondered why anyone would want to live in this place, though. It made him sad, looking at a home that held memories of love and laughter and family and one tragic instance of pain and death. 

“This is my home,” the one called Derek said to him.

Thor nodded, realizing that he was surrounded by a werewolf pack. He called Mjölnir to him, and he looked at Derek, studying his face. “You do me a favor tonight, Alpha. Let me return it,” he said, and he took his hammer and smashed it down on the front step of the old home. A hammer was a mighty weapon in battle, yes, but it also represented a peaceful time, when things were created.

The mansion shuddered under Thor’s power, and it looked like it wavered before Thor’s magic crawled up the sides of the home, restoring it to its original glory: three stories of protection against cold and enemies and danger. 

Everyone stared at him, but Thor knew that this part of the gods’ stories were so often left out. They had immense power and not all of it was used for crushing people. They had been worshipped in the olden times for a reason and that reason was not always fear.

“I am the son of Freyja, not just Odin,” Thor said.

The werewolf pack stared at him in shock, and then they made their way inside the home.

There was no furniture, and the walls were not decorated or painted, but Thor knew that those things were something this pack would have to take care of on its own. Those were what made Thor’s house their home, and it was up to them to turn it into that.

Thor stood in a large room that he assumed would be the family room, and he watched as the werewolf pack gathered around him. There were adults there, not that they were any closer in age to Thor than these children but it made him glad that they were willing to protect these children. They stared at Thor like he was an interloper, which he technically was, but he was glad that they wanted to help their children. So many adults didn’t, these days, and to Thor that was just sad. He had a great relationship with his parents, and he wanted that for other people.

He knew as soon as Przemysław’s dad came into the room, because a part of him just seemed to settle. He smiled at the man, who looked at him uncomfortably, but it wasn’t the first time that Thor had gotten a look like that so it didn’t bother him. Not that anything had really bothered him for years, truth be told.

Przemysław and someone called Dr. Deaton, or Mr. Lafourche as they sometimes referred to him, drew some sort of circle around him with a powdery purple substance. Thor wondered if there was a way that he could talk them into giving some to him, because he thought it would look pretty on one of his scrapbooking pages, but he didn’t say a word.

Przemysław then did something where he sat outside of the circle, and he said some words.

Thor didn’t feel any different. “That’s okay, man,” Thor said after he had seen the look of disappointment on Przemysław’s face. “You’re cool.”

“I have to try again,” the boy said.

“Stiles, don’t stress out about it,” Derek said, wrapping his arm around the boy’s shoulders.

“You have to focus more,” Dr. Deaton said, “Thor’s anger has been separated from him by Loki himself, you have to concentrate so that your will is more powerful than Loki’s.”

Przemysław nodded his head and started concentrating again. This time, it raised the hair on the back of Thor’s neck, and he saw that every other creature in the room could feel the room filling with magic. It smelled, magic did, of ozone and rose attar and something else, something that was unique to Przemysław. 

Thor saw how it affected all of the wolves in the room, much like a fine whiskey would. They were suddenly relaxed and sensuous, as if the electrical tingles were in all of their extremities and not just in the surrounding atmosphere. 

Przemysław was sweating, but he looked calm, sitting outside the circle with his eyes closed. He looked up at Thor, his golden eyes shining and the whites replaced by the same blue as the outside sky. Occasionally, the white would flash back in, like a cloud, but Thor knew when the white had been taken up entirely by the blue Stiles had a handle on his magic.

Thor was losing control with the magic attacking him, he heard thunder rumbling outside and could feel the lightning striking down to the forest floor. He threw his head back, feeling everything, feeling connections that he had never realized were there. He could feel the earth creeping up from where he was sitting on the floor, could feel it wrapping its arms around him. For the first time, he understood why some humans referred to the earth as their mother, because he was safe in her womb again.

Thor gasped, feeling that being taken away from him. He wanted to shake Przemysław, make him give him that feeling back, and he realized he was angry.

Thor was angry and he laughed with the joy of it, welcoming the feeling back, glorying in the desire to fight and to conquer, remembering ambition and battle lust and the intensity of want. 

He saw that Przemysław felt it too, only it affected him a little different. Thor was amused to watch him wrap his body around the Alpha of the little werewolf pack, amused as the other wolves dressed as people quickly left the house to work off Thor’s emotions out between themselves. 

“Thank you, Przemysław Stilinski,” Thor said, although he was rather certain that the boy was no longer paying attention to anyone but the wolf he was currently mauling with his mouth.

Thor turned and walked out of the house, quickly followed by the human adults.

“You’ll fight with us then?” the hunter asked him.

“I will,” Thor vowed. “But I might stay even longer. There are things in this town that interest me,” he gave a sideways look at the sheriff. It wasn’t a sexual perusal, but this man interested him, this man might be the beginning of his own band of Berserks.

Both the witch posing as the veterinarian and the hunter swallowed nervously at this announcement, but Thor didn’t care. 

“Come, Sheriff Stilinski,” Thor said, “we must speak of things that are.”

The Sheriff nodded, and he led Thor to his patrol car, where Thor felt the glory of a good battle strategy in the making. He had his first commander, and he had a war to fight. Soon, the world would remember what it was like to have a god walk among them.

**Author's Note:**

> This is largely disjointed and pretty terribly written. I will confess I'm trying to distract myself from larger issues.
> 
> I wrote this because my dad is dying. He had a stroke last night, and we're probably going to pull the plug tomorrow. I don't want to think about anything, to be honest.


End file.
